


When Time Stands Still

by RubyFiamma



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Character Death, Emotionally Repressed, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, POV Second Person, Thought Projection, mentions of drug and alcohol abuse, transference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 22:33:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3150767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubyFiamma/pseuds/RubyFiamma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gokudera doesn't have a lot of time, except that he does and he can't handle any of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Time Stands Still

**Author's Note:**

> I was sad and I'm sorry. This was basically my mental state at the time and I took it out on Gokudera. I'm trash.

**When Time Stands Still**

* * *

Sometimes you sit there for hours, your expression blank and your limbs numb and everything around you is eerily quiet but you can’t turn the volume down on the static noise that buzzes frenetically inside your head. You grit your teeth, you cover your ears but that can’t stop the sound. You get drunk, you take pills — despite your  _hatred_ for all things medicinal — but no amount of haze can muffle the shrillness.

You watch the clock hands move, tick like a time bomb waiting to go off except it’s an eternity before you get to the explosion. There’s no countdown to chaos, only seconds, minutes, hours, days. And despite the clock that tells you time, it holds no meaning for you. The sun rises and falls but there are no seconds, minutes, hours, days. Just a really long stretch of nothing.

You’re lonely without him. You have friends, you have your boss, you have your  _dream_ job. Your life has meaning _._  Until you realise that he’s gone and it doesn’t. Until you realise that he  _was_  your dream.

It sounds ridiculous but it isn’t. He’s given you life and friendship and love when no one else would and you thought you could handle being alone before but — without him, nothing makes sense and fuck, if that doesn't screw with your mind.. You’re lost -- _so lost_ because he was the one you looked to for guidance. He was the one that kept you in check, kept you from doing crazy shit and your moral compass says  _stay -- stay for the family, stay for the Tenth. Stay for your_ duties  _as a right hand man_ but that's not what the stabbing pain in your heart says. It says you don't  _want_ to be here, you don't  _want_ to be anywhere he isn't.

There’s noise,  _so much_ _noise_ and you want to scream and cry and break things but you’ve already been through that and you don’t have the energy for it anymore. Your apartment —  _our_ _apartment_  when your mind refuses to allow you to accept what’s happened and move on — is desolate and destroyed. There are no more pictures of you and him, there are no more trophies, glass cases holding stupid,  _meaningless_ stuff — there is  _nothing_ that you haven’t destroyed in hopes of destroying the memory of him except his ghost wanders free every time you walk in to your bedroom, loops of him turning and smiling at you run on replay like someone’s forgotten to change the reel on a bad romance film. His scent lingers on every fabric, his laugh echoes loudly in your ears and his touch burns your skin but it never leaves a mark. You can’t get rid of something that refuses to leave except he  _ha_ s and he can’t return. And that to you is life’s finest attempt at a cruel joke. Especially when you close your eyes and you can still hear him whisper your name and feel the gentle brush of his lips kiss you goodnight.

But the question is what would you do if you couldn’t feel anything at all? It’s about that time now, you know. For your answer.

You can’t feel his touch or his lips, you can’t hear his laugh or him calling your name. All you hear is  _tick_ _tick_ _tick_ _tick --_ that  _insistent_ ticking that’s telling you it’s time — it’s  _time_ to make a  _decision_  and it’s so fucking  _pushy_ — why can’t it slow down and just give you a minute to  _think_ _._ Hurry, hurry _,_ _hurry_ as if you don’t have all the time in the world — it’s nothing but white noise and you just can’t fucking get one thought in no matter how hard you try and you just want everything to be  _quiet_ — just  _please_ be  _quiet_ _._

And it hits you. It really  _hits_ you. Like the fastest line driver flying at you at 106 mph -- set by Aroldis Chapman in 2011, breaking his previous record of 105 mph set the year before and you  _shouldn’t_ _know this_ but you do. The fact that you’ve retained the stupid things he would tell you despite your complete lack of interest in them is validity enough to know what you’re planning to do is  _logical_ _._ Because that’s you, right? Everything has to make  _sense_ — you make decisions based of facts and not  _feelings_ _._ It hits you so fucking  _hard_  that suddenly everything just makes perfect sense. You can actually think — crystal fucking clear clarity. And for once, you hear the silence and it  _hurts_ _._ Because now you realise just how lonely you really are, how much you actually love him and just how much you’d sacrifice for him.

Everything — isn’t it? You’d sacrifice everything for him, just like he did for you when he took that step in front of you and shielded you from that incoming bullet. His love had no boundaries, no rules. He’s an  _idiot_ but he’s your idiot and you  _can’t_ live without him. You just can’t.

The red ribbons are stark in contrast against your pallid skin and god, you feel stupid -- you feel weak -- you feel like a  _coward_ , guilty that you're leaving the Tenth, but you've come to accept that he is strong and so are the people that protect him and he doesn't  _need_ you anymore. You aren't strong anymore, because you can't honestly function without him by your side. You're _scared_  but you finally feel the quiet. You finally feel  _free_.

You watch the clock hands move, tick like a time bomb waiting to go off except you won’t be waiting for an eternity for something to happen. There are only minutes and maybe seconds before you get to see him again, when time stands still.

There’ll be no countdown to chaos. Only peace.


End file.
